What is the missional living? How can you equip people to reach their neighbors?

Learning to immerse yourself in the questions, hopes and beliefs of your neighborhood so you can give a biblical, gospel-centered response to its questions. Come learn practical tools on how to mobilize your core team to reach your neighbors.

Prayer meetings, marches, protests and demanding resources to "fix everything in the community" or strategies to "get them before they are teens" are all proposed ways to address urban violence. And none of them are working.

This session will focus on understanding what is happening at the heart of the violence and what meaningful response is available to us as Christian people. Joel Hamernick will lead the discussion to explore the roots of violence among our youth and how this relates to the roles that they can and should play as members of our communities.

Additionally, the roles of other community stakeholders and law enforcement will be explored. In the midst of these considerations, we can find a place for the work of God's people as we repent of our own cowardice and self-aggrandizement and embrace our calling to be agents of reconciliation.

Are you willing to go to jail for your beliefs about justice and the gospel? Are you willing to risk your reputation on a national level to stand with those who are marginalized? How do we move from "hashtag activism" to real-world action?

Michelle Higgins stands a Christian who has put feet to her faith and paid a high cost for it. Listen to lessons she has learned from marching with protesters in Ferguson and working to build bridges between faith communities and civic organizations in St. Louis. She will also unpack her experiences standing with Black Lives Matter at Urbana 2016 and the tumult that followed.

In this seminar you will be challenged not just to talk about justice but to put your faith in action and take risks for the sake of the gospel.

Apostasy, or the leaving of the Christian faith, is seen all around us. From well-known Christians in the spotlight to Christians we know well in our local churches, the falling away of those we knew to proudly profess the truths of Christ is disheartening.

How do we minister to those who seem to be drifting away from Jesus? Furthermore, how do we persevere in the faith once handed down to us?

Biblical exposition must be contextual in order to reach its fullest potential for impact. How do we prepare sermons that exegete scripture and exegete our context? Attend this workshop for a balanced view on contextualization and biblical exposition as we consider preaching Jesus to a hip-hop generation.

It is good to pursue progress and growth in ministry, but when does that cross the line into something toxic? When do we go from serving God to serving ourselves? When does leaving a legacy become about people remembering us and not our master?

We will consider the Parable of the Talents and how a stewardship perspective on ministry can safeguard us against the corrosive power pride and ambition can have on those who do God’s work.

The complex world of urban ministry requires a deeper approach and paradigm. Often, our perspective on urban ministry arises from a simplistic view of the city. This workshop examines the Biblical discipline of lament and engages in a theological exegesis of the book of Lamentations to draw out principles and practices that call for greater theological depth in urban ministry.

The phrase "context is king" applies not only to biblical interpretation but also to race relations in the United States. It is impossible to understand present racial tensions without comprehending the history of racial conflict in this country.

This workshop explores how a greater awareness of historical realities helps Christians unpack and respond to racially-charged incidents today. We will take a brief survey of U.S. racial history with stops in the Colonial Period, the Antebellum Period, the Jim Crow era and the Civil Rights era.

We will end with an analysis of current events from Ferguson to Confederate flag controversy. Through deeper understanding of U.S. history, Christians will be better equipped to love their neighbors across racial and ethnic lines.

Some parents may feel like the safest place to raise their kids are behind picket fences and acres of green grass. But for most of us in the city, that is not our reality.

Join us as we explore how we can use our city as a wealth of knowledge and experience in raising our kids. From getting creative on the sidewalk with our neighbors, to on the spot discipleship, the city can be a greater back yard than we imagine when we walk alongside our kids in it.

This session will discuss the saving benefit of reconciliation with God through Christ by looking at selected texts in the Bible and how the substitutionary death of Jesus, his resurrection and justification by faith intersect with reconciliation with God.

A final element of this session will be to consider how the death of Jesus delivers sinners from the wrath of God by making the enemies of God his friends through Christ. Finally, the session will provide practical applications of this doctrine.